Brady Hunsaker graduated from Georgia Tech in 2003 with a Ph.D. in   Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization and joined the University of Pittsburgh Department of Industrial Engineering as a junior faculty member.  His research there involved improved computational techniques for integer programming as well as looking at the possible benefits of applying integer programming to redesign the national liver donation system.  He particularly enjoyed the teaching aspects of the job, teaching graduate students, undergraduates, and doing outreach to high school students and teachers to introduce them to the field of operations research.

After four years he took a job as a software engineer at Google in 2008.  He writes, “Much of my time was spent working on online shopping, particularly in helping understand the quality of various web merchants and how we can help users make decisions about where to shop online.  I also helped establish the Pittsburgh Google office's outreach program for K-12 students, co-developing hands-on activities to introduce interesting ideas in computer science to middle school and early high school students.”

More recently he has worked on Google Maps, including directions when using public transit as well as understanding how users use Google Maps so that the company can make good decisions about how to invest its efforts to improve.